Violeta Chamorro

Violeta Chamorro (18 October 1929-) was President of Nicaragua from 25 April 1990 to 10 January 1997, succeeding Daniel Ortega and preceding Arnoldo Aleman. She led the big tent National Opposition Union to victory in the 1990 presidential election, ending the Nicaraguan Civil War, although Nicaragua's economy crashed during her presidency.

Biography
Violeta Chamorro was born in Rivas, Nicaragua, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, and she married the editor of the liberal daily newspaper La Prensa, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal. After the assassination of her husband on the orders of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, she took over the editorship and became a leading opponent to the dictatorship. After Somoza's fall, she joined the Sandinista junta, but left in April 1980 to become the leading critic of the Sandinistas through her newspaper, which provided some freedom of opinion during the Sandinista government. Heading a diffuse coalition of fourteen parties, the National Opposition Union, she was the surprise winner of the 1990 elections against President Daniel Ortega. She managed to maintain a careful balance between appeasing the Contras, on the one hand, and Ortega's Sandinista movement, which still controlled the bureaucracy and the army, on the other. From 1993, she was forced to govern with a Sandinista parliamentary majority, and she agreed to a 1995 constitutional reform as demanded by Parliament. The years of Chamorro initiated a period of significant economic and social decline for Nicaragua, which became the poorest country of the Americas after Haiti. She left office in 1997.